6.07.2013

Culture of Death in the Maternity Ward

A couple things kind of happened at the same time, I've been flipping through my notebook from around the time Michelle discovered she was first pregnant (about 2 years ago now), and First Things magazine last month (which, I'm just getting around to now) had an article titled Medicinal Murder by Wesley Smith. What do these two writings have in common? Our culture of death.

It is rather ironic, I think, that it took a trip to the maternity ward of a hospital to fully appreciate and understand the term "culture of death". Until that first hospital appointment, I had a vague notion of how many abortions were performed and where euthanasia has been legalized and for which illnesses, but I didn't know the true extant of the culture, until that day.

We walked into that first appointment, overjoyed at the prospect of this new life, and the first question the doctor - who according to a nurse, loves babies - asked was, "We need to decide this now because time is ticking, do you want an abortion?"

I was too shocked and taken aback to be offended. Later in the same appointment she scheduled blood work and ultrasounds in case of genetic abnormalities - why? - so an abortion could be performed if there were signs of genetic defects like Down Syndrome. There's a name for this, by the way, it's called Eugenics.

After that initial meeting I wrote in my notebook, "We choose death so we can get what we want rather than what is handed to us", in this respect, death has become the ultimate cure-all.